Another Reason Why We're Winning

Sean Quinn from 538 reports on the ground game (emph. added):

Something interesting is happening with John McCain’s campaign. Up until now, we’ve had no trouble gaining access to field offices and volunteers. Here in St. Louis, we were told by Tina Hervey, Missouri Republican State Party Press Secretary, that she had never heard of FiveThirtyEight, and while they trusted Politico, we were people who they had to decide whether we “shouldn’t or don’t need to be talking to.” (McCain’s Missouri press secretary actually works out of Iowa, and did not return calls or email.) I told Tina that’s not a story we wanted to write, that this was our first Republican resistance, and that while she may not have heard of us, we’d probably go over 2.5 million site visits this week, now that we’re regularly past 400,000 per weekday. I told her I’d hold off writing her flat refusal and give her the opportunity to change her mind.

No budging. We were told that we’d be asked to leave public field offices we now attempted to visit. We did not get any promised follow-up helping get access to the post-debate Palin rally last night, and we were locked out. Hmm.

[...] We walk into McCain offices to find them closed, empty, one person, two people, sometimes three people making calls. Many times one person is calling while the other small clutch of volunteers are chatting amongst themselves. In one state, McCain’s state field director sat in one of these offices and, sotto voce, complained to us that only one man was making calls while the others were talking to each other about how much they didn't like Obama, which was true. But the field director made no effort to change this. This was the state field director.

Only for the first time the other day did we see a McCain organizer make a single phone call. [...]

Given a choice between taking embarrassing photos of empty phone banks, we give McCain’s people the chance to pose for photos to show us the action for what they continually claim we “just missed.” No more. We stop into offices at all open hours of the day, but generally more in the afternoon and evening. “Call time,” for both campaigns, is all day, but the time when folks over 65 are generally targeted begins in late afternoon and goes til 8 or 9pm. Universally, McCain’s people stop earlier. Even when we show up at 6:15pm, we’re told we just missed the big phone bank, or to come back in 30 minutes. If we show up an hour later, we “just missed it” again.

The McCain offices are also calm, sedate. Little movement. No hustle. In the Obama offices, it's a whirlwind. People move. It's a dynamic bustle. You can feel it in our photos.

[...]

You could take every McCain volunteer we’ve seen doing actual work in the entire trip, over six states, and it would add up to the same as Obama’s single Thornton, CO office. Or his single Durango, CO office. These ground campaigns bear no relationship to each other.

(h/t: Andrew Sullivan)